You look starving! Want something to eat?

One of the things I find that makes any problem worse is that really annoying habit our minds have of totally focusing on the problem that we are trying our damnedest to forget and ignore. Wy does it do that?!

You know, it’s like having a sore shoulder and, no matter how often you try and ignore said sore shoulder, you just can’t help rubbing it and holding it funny and stretching it and thinking about it all damn day and the more you think about it the more it hurts and annoys you, so you stretch it, and hold it and rub it, and try and ignore it, while rubbing it and that just makes it the only thing you can think about and…well, I think you get the idea!

In my experience, this ‘focus issue’ is the foundation of so many of the problems and challenges we face. For example; the more you focus on, and get worked up about, anxiety, the more anxious you will get. Guaranteed. The more we focus on, and get annoyed about, how we procrastinate, the more we will procrastinate. The more we focus on, and beat ourselves up about, not doing the things we want to do the less likely we are to do them. But still, we keep doing it. For some bizarre reason, after a lifetime of experience, we still think focusing on our problems will make them go away.

Can you not see? This tactic is just plain sh!te. It doesn’t work. It’s a flawed, broken and generally useless, strategy for life. It’s simple, the more you focus on your problems, the bigger they become. It’s just the way it works. Imagine your focus and attention is like fuel or food. Feed your problems they’ll get bigger and stronger.

So what to do instead?

Two questions to start you in the right direction; When does your problem not happen? And, what would you like to be like instead? Take a minute and think about it. It might bend your head a bit!

Now, whatever you found in that ‘space’, feed that.

I will admit, this is a wee bit ‘positive thinky’, and you know I’m not a massive fan of sticking plasters over gaping wounds, but healing any wound has to start somewhere, and the act of refocusing your attention? This is a really good somewhere.

Notice the spaces where your problem isn’t and feed that space. Notice the places where you are, however briefly, at your best and give that ‘best’ you all the attention they deserve. Give your focus to what you want, not what you don’t. And keep doing it. These parts of you are undernourished so it will take a wee bit of time before they are strong enough to stand and show themselves regularly.

Your demons seem strong because they are well fed. I say, starve the ba$tards and leave them hungry. There are much better parts of you that are ready to be fed…